


Picture This

by haphephobiaisfun



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Image, M/M, Pictures, tasteful nudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haphephobiaisfun/pseuds/haphephobiaisfun
Summary: An argument over taking pictures leads to Crowley’s realization that Aziraphale has a hang-up over his appearance.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	Picture This

“How have you not told me about this??”

Aziraphale was crying with laughter as he held a book of “tasteful nude models”. It was one of those coffee book types that sold better at Christmas when one needed to buy a prank gift or wanted to come off as edgy to their houseguests. 

”Excuse you, you are being quite rude. I won’t be giving you any gifts in the future at this rate,” Crowley replied with a scowl.

“But, that mustache! And all that chest hair! Did you grow it out for the occasion?”

Crowley expression turned from mock-seriousness to a twinge of hurt. Aziraphale noticed.

“Come, dear boy, have a seat. I will pour us something nice and you can begin your tale. I want to hear all about this.” Aziraphale poured a bit of bourbon for them both. “Now, as you know, I don’t keep up with the latest fashions, but that hair screams the late 1970’s.”

“1981, actually.”

“Close enough. How did this come about?”

“Andy Warhol, heard of him?”

“Yes, the soup can man.”

Crowley scoffed. “He did much more than the Campbell Soup print. He did a ton of photography.”

“Obviously,” the angel said, flipping through the book.

“One night, I was at Studio 54. I had been assigned to New York to make some general mischief, but decided to go dancing instead.”

“What a surprise. You usually take your work so seriously,” Aziraphale teased.

“Anyways, I was dancing with a number of others on the floor, just an orgy of rhythm and excitement. Suddenly, this pale looking artsy-looking fella comes up and starts counting. ‘I need five of you… one, two, three, four, five!’ I was number three, by the way.”

“Noted. So, he just grabbed strangers off the dance floor and…?”

“We followed him into the street. There was a van waiting that took us a few blocks away to a decrepit store front. No one really thought anything of it, except one girl who clearly knew who he was. We piled into the building and he advised us he’d pay us a decent chunk of change to pose for him.”

“You didn’t know these people then?” 

“Nope. I posed last, and I was the only one willing to shed my clothes. Not a big deal, really.”

“Well, thank you for the smile, but I don’t understand why you are giving it to me. It’s special to you, isn’t it?

“Well, my section is, yeah. Don’t particularly care for anyone else’s, and you like books, so there you go.”

They shared a laugh, then Aziraphale had an idea. He set the book on the coffee table in front of him.

“So, if the book was full of only you, it would hold more value?”

“Well,” Crowley snickered, “of course it would.”

“I have a nice camera in the back room, and I have a couple of nice rugs, you know…”

The demon put his drink down on a coaster next to the book, trying hard to disguise his extreme interest in what the angel was suggesting.

“... I might even have a nice duvet that could work. Of course, lighting is no issue.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you are going to create a portfolio of my nudes?”

“I thought I would offer.”

Crowley thought about it for a couple of seconds before replying. 

“Okay, but only on one condition. You need to do the same.”

“What? Absolutely not!”

“Oh, so you are naughty enough to take pictures, but not be in them? That’s the part that’s beneath you, your principality?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Aziraphale countered. His fun suggestion had led them straight into an argument.

“What exactly do you mean then?”

“I mean that if you are talking about how these human forms look sans clothing, my form is more comfortable on this side of a camera, that’s all!”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m not comfortable having pictures taken of me, in this body, in the nude.”

Crowley was genuinely confused. Aziraphale tried to drop the whole issue.

“Look, we can just forget it. Thank you for the book, dear, and for sharing your adventure.”

“No, hold on,” the demon interrupted. “Angel, you don’t like your body?”

“I like it fine. It’s plenty serviceable, it’s just that I wouldn’t want to be photographed without clothes on in it.”

He tried to turn away and tend to a bit more bourbon, but another hand took his glass.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispered as to not escalate things further, “you know there is nothing wrong with how you look, right? I see people flirting with you all the time, and it isn’t because of that big book energy.”

“People flirt with me?”

“I can’t tell if you are being serious or not.”

“Look, people are kind, but they are mostly flirtatious when they need something… help finding a Melville first edition, or something similar. It’s common.”

“You honestly think people are act interested in you only when you can do something for them?” 

The angel said nothing, but his exasperated expression begged for the conversation to end. For his part, Crowley felt a bit sick. 

“Is that what you think I do? That I flatter you in jest because I want something, is that what you think?”

Aziraphale held onto the drink cart for support. He bowed his head and looked at the floor. 

“No, not now. There was a time when I did, but after a few thousand years, you have no need to lie to me. It took a bit to realize that.”

He looked up at Crowley, who was silent. His eyes were obscured by the dark glasses, but that didn’t prevent Aziraphale from seeing how his words hurt the demon. 

“I see,” Crowley muttered. “Thanks for the bourbon. I think I’m going to go for a drive.”

“Oh, anytime. Be careful, alright?”

“Sure.”

Crowley’s departure allowed Aziraphale to drop his guard. Hot tears poured down his face as he considered how stupid he must have sounded to Crowley. Aziraphale wanted to dismiss this as the kind of disagreement they have always had, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much. A single question was roaring through the angel’s mind, and he couldn’t figure out the answer no matter how he tried.

“What does he see in me anyway?”

Crowley sped through the countryside, a volatile mixture of emotions. He was angry, sympathetic, shocked, and even unsure.

If Aziraphale didn’t believe that Crowley liked him just the way the angel was, then maybe the angel didn’t really reciprocate his feelings, either. Crowley was once an angel, and he knew a few things about love, whether Aziraphale believed it or not. Chief among those things was that a person cannot love anyone until they have learned to love themselves. Second was that angels are big on sensing love.

“Does he not sense that I love him? Have I been a fool all these years?”

Their next meeting was uneasy. While Crowley and Aziraphale had gotten into the habit of hanging out at the bookstore after closing most evenings, the demon had stayed away for a few days. Aziraphale was hurt, but he respected Crowley needing to recover from whatever pain the angel cause him.

The bell on the front door rang after Aziraphale was already locked up.

“Crowley, is that you?”

Crowley hollered across the store. “Unless you started giving out bookstore keys. Who else?”

“Would you like some tea? I just fixed some. I have some chocolate biscuits, too

By the time Aziraphale turned to greet Crowley, the demon already had his hands around the angel’s waist.

“Of course, I would. Anytime you offer me something nice and hot, I’d be a fool to turn it down.”

“Oh! You startled me, dear.”

Aziraphale broke Crowley’s embrace to turn around and face him. Crowley took him by his hands.

“I wanted to talk to you about the other night.”

“Oh, bother, we don’t have to discuss all that again. We can just have a pleasant evening, can’t we?”

“We can and we will, but I want to know something. If you don’t like how you look, you would have miracled a tummy tuck or face lift or whatever humans do when they are malcontent. But I suspect that you wouldn’t do that, because you are hiding behind that form.”

“Hiding from what, pray tell?” the exasperated angel asked.

“Love. Physical affection. Commitment. You name it. You thought you could avoid all the heartbreak that this world brings if we’re in a shell that you thought didn’t look like everyone’s cup of tea.”

Aziraphale stood silent. 

“Well, bad news, angel. I have a mighty attraction to you just how you are. So do others. Are you just going to push back on all of us?”

Crowley was practically foaming at the mouth, while the angel stood silently. After a few moments of silence in the bookstore, Aziraphale cleared his throat and spoke.

“Yes.”

“Yes, What?”

“Yes, I like that this form doesn’t attract a large number of people.”

“And?”

“And I suppose it’s convenient for avoiding certain personal situations.”

The demon tore off his glasses. “I adore you. Everything about you. When you tell me that you don’t look the way you should to be in certain kinds of pictures, it infuriates me because I know how you look to me. You’re perfect, dammit.”

Aziraphale gave him a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I never meant to upset you.”

“Ngk!! This isn’t about me being upset! This is about you not being comfortable with yourself, the self that you put forward on this Earth. Look, angel, pictures or no pictures, I just want you to see and appreciate what I do. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said timidly.

“Good. Fine. Where’s that tea?”

They had a nice enough visit after that. They had some small talk as afternoon turned into the evening, and then evening eased into the night. There were tea and biscuits, complaints about the postman, complaints about plants, and a bit of talk about the upcoming holidays. 

Crowley left as the hour grew late, but not before he gave the angel a kiss on his cheek.

“Think about what I said, okay?”

“Promise.”

When the demon departed, Aziraphale walked around his store, wondering about what his friend had said. He decided to test it, this affection Crowley had for him just the way he was. After doing a bit of internet research, he found a selection of boudoir pictures. Surely he could take a few pics like those and shut Crowley up one way or another.

In a few days, Crowley came by in the evening. “Angel?”

“Back here, dear.”

Aziraphale was sitting in his arm chair, feet propped up and invested in a book.

“There you are. Slow day.”

“The slowest day. No customers to run off, the rain was at it all day. I only got one thing accomplished.”

“Ah, what was that, then?”

Aziraphale picked up a stack of prints he had de slows the day before and handed them to Crowley.

“Ah, got the old camera out after all, I see.”

“I’m not a professional by any means, but you can let me know what you think.”

Crowley skimmed over the first few, mostly of the bookstore. Views from the street, views inside, views of Aziraphale’s ass…

What?

Crowley tried so hard to keep his expression from changing, but it was damned near impossible. Here, in black and white, was the angel looking over his shoulder at the camera, complete with bare backside in view.

Aziraphale kept reading as Crowley gave him the occasional surprised glance. There were so many poses… when did he get a bear rug?... and each was more entrancing than the last. Crowley’s panting breaths were giving him away.

“Everything fine, dear?”

“Fine, ahem, just fine. Lots of pictures to go through,” the demon squeaked. 

“No worries, take your time. I’ve got all night and this big book to read.”

Crowley honestly didn’t know whether to be angry or turned on, but he was definitely sitting at a mixture of both. Then he got to the last few pictures. Full frontal nudity. How had the angel not been reprimanded for these?

“Where is the bear rug, Angel?”

“Oh, I sent it out to be cleaned.”

“Yeah, I bet so,” the demon mumbled under his breath. “And this stripper’s pole?”

“It’s just an ordinary pole in the private library. Weight-bearing. I believe.”

“Naturally. And what kind of oil is this all over your skin?”

“Baby oil. Just simple baby oil.”

“You damn tease!”

“Now, before you get all upset. I just wanted to see if you were telling the truth, that’s all. Judging by your reaction, I guess I was wrong in thinking that you couldn’t find me attractive.”

Crowley sat back on the sofa. “Angel, of course I do. I love you inside and out.”

He then stood up and turned to leave.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I’ll be back, I just wanted to get a better look at these pics in the light of my place. Ciao for now!”

Crowley scurried off rather quickly with the stack of pictures as Aziraphale sat befuddled. As he thought of Crowley’s comically hasty departure, all Aziraphale could do was smile. 

That, and order more film online.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcome!


End file.
